Power consumption is a key consideration in devices that are battery powered. A design criterion for a battery powered device is to minimize power consumption to extend the period of time between battery recharges or replacement as much as possible. In some deployments, such as remotely located sensors, battery replacement may be both impractical as well as expensive. Even in situations where the battery powered device is readily available and recharging is easy, such as in cellular telephones, tablets, laptop computers, wearable devices (WDs), and so on, recharging the battery is still an inconvenient and time consuming task.
Radio communications modules (RCMs), which provide wireless connectivity that is so vital to the operation of these battery powered devices, is also a significant source of power consumption. In general, the more complex the communications or greater range supported by the RCM, the greater the power consumption. A reduction in power consumption is realizable by putting one or more RCMs of a battery powered device into sleep (or power off, power saving, power reduced, inactive) mode when there is no need of data communications while maintaining a simple, low-power wake-up receiver to receive a wake-up packet. The wake-up packet is transmitted by another device to wake up at least one of the one or more RCMs of the battery powered device in order to resume data communications with the battery powered device. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 Working Group has initiated a standard amendment project referred to as the 802.11ba Amendment to standardize such wake-up technique to be added to the 802.11 family of standards.